<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Outgloried by the Stars by Muccamukk</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846868">Outgloried by the Stars</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk'>Muccamukk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Band of Brothers (TV 2001)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Astronauts, Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, NASA, Secret Relationship, Space Stations, Zero-gravity sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:01:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,240</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846868</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rookie astronaut John Julian is excited to serve on the International Space Station, and even more excited to be there with Babe, but it's hard to keep a relationship secret in a confined space with a bunch of nosy astronauts and cosmonauts.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Babe Heffron/John Julian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Heavy Artillery Rare Pair Exchange 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Outgloried by the Stars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariamegale/gifts">mariamegale</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written with extreme gratitude to all of the astronauts and cosmonauts who have served aboard the ISS, especially those who wrote books about it.  <cite>Diario di un'apprendista astronauta</cite> by Samantha Cristoforetti, <cite>An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth</cite> by Chris Hadfield, and <cite>Endurance</cite> by Scott Kelly were all invaluable resources. Thank you also to Sally Ride.</p><p>Title from an untitled poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Susan Ranson and Marielle Sutherland.</p><p>Thanks to ThrillingDetectiveTales for beta reading, and to Rilla for brainstorming.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first thing that happened when John drifted through the hatch between the Soyuz rocket and the International Space Station was Commander Guarnere pulling him into a bear hug and planting a sloppy kiss on his cheek.</p><p>"Welcome to Low Earth Orbit, kid," Guarnere said, and spun John away towards Cosmonaut Rudolf Spanov, who thankfully didn't kiss him.</p><p>Babe was last, floating at the far end of the entry module, wearing the expression of a man who wished very much there were neither witnesses nor cameras. He looked good though. Three months on orbit had rounded his face a little like it did for everyone, and he'd ended up with one of those cosmonaut-inflicted buzz cuts, but other than that he was the same old Babe that John had trained alongside for the past three years.</p><p>John had been planning to shake hands, but a six hour flight in the Soyuz hadn't been enough time to get used to this whole microgravity thing, and he was moving so fast that he overshot and slammed right into Babe, knocking them both against the hatch. If Babe hadn't wrapped one arm around the small of John's back, and looped the other through a hand hold, they'd have bounced forward again, knocking into Renée and Evgeni as they too emerged from the cramped rocket.</p><p>"Hey," John said. He had been telling himself that he and Babe would maintain a professional distance for their projected shared two months on orbit. They would be friendly, cordial even, but nothing more than friends who'd been part of the same astronaut candidate cohort. That plan had not involved floating in a full body embrace with his secret boyfriend.</p><p>"Hey," Babe answered, trying to hide a grin, and John didn't think he had any idea what to do from here. Renée saved them by shooing everyone out into the main Russian segment of the Space Station, and then forward down through a maze of connecting hatches, modules and nodes that John thought he'd memorized, but which looked very different without one side or another definitively being the floor.</p><p>John didn't work out until he was halfway to the Columbus laboratory that he was still holding Babe's hand.</p><p>"You'll get the hang of this in no time," Babe said, grinning back at John as he more or less towed him along. "You'll see. Me, I never want to go back to having my feet on the ground."</p><p>"You could stay on as a stowaway," John suggested. He didn't want Babe to go back to Earth in two months either, leaving John another three months on orbit without him.</p><p>"Yeah, don't give him no ideas," Guarnere said as he shot by them, body angled like a diver. The empty right leg of his jumpsuit flapped behind him like a flag. He twisted mid-flight and braked off something John couldn't see, slowing to drift next to Renée like he'd always been there.</p><p>John wondered if he'd ever be that graceful in microgravity. Bumbling along behind Babe, he doubted it. He tried to tell himself that as the only first time astronaut of the crew that he'd flown with, he was at a disadvantage when it came to muscle memory and experience. If he got his five months in space, and another flight, he'd take to it as fast as Renée and Evgeni had. Hell, Babe was on his first flight, and after three months he was moving like he was born up here, awkward, lanky son of a bitch that he was.</p><p>"How long, do you think?" John asked, hoping his voice was too low for the cosmonauts trailing behind them.</p><p>"A week, tops," Babe told him. He squeezed John's hand, and tugged enough that they could drift shoulder to shoulder. "I promise you: you're gonna love it."</p><p>John did love it. He loved everything about finally being up here, where he'd dreamed of going his whole life, and, by some stroke of Divine Providence, here with the man he loved, even if that part was a secret. He loved that he was going to get to spend the next five months looking down at the Earth from three hundred kilometers up, and working on science to make long-term space flight possible, and every last thing about it. He just didn't love that he didn't seem to be able to stop without running face first into a wall.</p><p>"I just hope I don't break anything," John muttered.</p>
<hr/><p>With the launch prep, launch, transit to the Space Station, docking, and meet and greet, John had been up for something like twenty hours before they got to Guarnere's whirlwind safety briefing and packed off to their pods to sleep. John was shaking with exhaustion by then, but like a kid who'd had too much sugar and excitement couldn't imagine closing his eyes and resting, either. He stared into his phone-booth-sized sleeping pod, and tried to will himself inside.</p><p>"Hey, Johnny, come look at this," Babe said, beckoning from the far end of the node.</p><p>There was no choice in that. John pushed off with too much force, as usual and had to slow himself by catching at passing hatches until he didn't quite crash into Babe this time. He let Babe lead him down to the Cupola, a glass dome on the nadir of the station staring down at the Earth as they fell past it. Two people didn't easily or completely fit inside, so they drifted with their legs hanging down into Node 3, and their hips jammed together in the space of the hatch.</p><p>Below/above/before them lay the stars, the nightside of the earth like a pool of darkness in their midst. Chains of lights marked the paths of human habitation, cities and highways whose shape refused to coalesce in John's tired mind. Babe took John's hand and held it to his chest, putting it flat over his heart so that John could feel his pulse as the Earth sped by underneath him. The lights faded to darkness as they passed over an ocean or desert, and John strained his eyes to make out the lights of ships even as he knew they'd be too small to see.</p><p>"Here she comes," Babe murmured, and John could feel his heart kick up, both their hearts kick up, in anticipation of the moment.</p><p>A ribbon of light spread across the limb of the Earth like molten gold, so dazzling that John had to squint against it until his eyes adjusted to the sudden dawn. Then they were speeding into the day, holding hands as the world burst into blue, and green. It was a clear spring morning in Europe today, nicer weather there than John'd had lifting off from Kazakhstan. He watched the ragged fingers of the Irish coast reaching out into the Atlantic, then the rest of the British Isles, impossible green smudged with the gray of cities, then more water, and the coastlines of the continent. John had been in most of those cities over the course of his training, and flown over the rest, but they'd never looked like this.</p><p>Babe leaned in the last few inches until he could plant a kiss on John's mouth. John was too busy staring gape-mouthed at the spread of the world, and didn't catch on for a moment. Then he turned his head, and their lips met properly. He was overtired, and the Space Station was falling across the world, and his body hadn't gotten used to the way microgravity refused to pull his blood towards his feet, but John didn't think any of that accounted for the euphoria lighting up his chest.</p><p>They'd gone so many months without doing this, and his mouth connecting with Babe's, taste of stale instant coffee and all, felt a key turning inside a lock and clicking free.</p><p>"Thank you," he whispered when he finally pulled away.</p><p>Babe glanced away, but there was nowhere to go jammed in the Cupola like this. "Hey, it happens nineteen times a day."</p><p>"I'm glad my first time was with you," John said, then blushed at how that sounded, though it was true on that level as well.</p><p>"For fuck's sake," Babe muttered and twisted to unstick them from how they were wedged in the hatch. He pushed off and drifted down John's body until he was back into the main space of Node 3. John lingered for a moment, watching the snow capped crinkle of the Alps, and then followed.</p><p>The larger crew area of Node 3 had been under his feet, but was technically on the zenith side of the Space Station from the Cupola, and therefore in a way up. But there was equipment and signage on every wall, and frankly John was too tired to deal with M.C. Escher come to life just then.</p><p>He followed Babe back to their pods and pulled into his. He had a sleeping bag he could climb into, and some straps if he wanted to tie himself to the wall, but John decided that for that first night on orbit, he wanted to just drift.</p><p>As he closed his eyes and let exhaustion pull him under, it occurred to John that he hadn't done a very good job keeping up with his vow to maintain a professional distance, and he hadn't even told Babe about the cat.</p>
<hr/><p>John woke up to the sound of the others' voices and groped around for a moment before he found the pod's light switch. It made a satisfying click under his fingers, like one of the old switches in his childhood home. The space station had been launched coming on twenty years ago, and was a far cry from the touch screens and sleek futurism people seemed to expect when they thought of working in space. If anything, it reminded John of the utilitarian dinginess of <cite>Battlestar Galactica</cite>, analogue systems and all.</p><p>"John, are you awake?" That was Renée's voice from outside his pod. He pushed the screen open, and saw her floating in front of him, her long honey-brown hair a halo around her head. "Sample time."</p><p>"Right," John said, and pushed himself out into Node 2 so that she could collect his saliva, blood and other bodily fluids. "Always fun before breakfast."</p><p>"Science," Babe said as he drifted by.</p><p>"Science," John muttered back. It wasn't like he hadn't signed up to be the experiment, they all had, but he still literally didn't know which way was up, and that was not the spirit with which he was prepared to face a microgravity toilet.</p><p>When he was done, they got a NASA nutritionist approved breakfast of lukewarm oatmeal and instant coffee, and Commander Guarnere took them on a more comprehensive tour of the Space Station. "Now that youse' awake," he said, South Philly not at all buffed by an advanced degree and years in the space program.</p><p>He'd tied a loose overhand knot in the leg of his sweatpants, which bobbed behind him as he floated. Renée was on her second flight, and not much had changed since then, so the tour was mostly for John's sake. He saw all the labs, the exercise equipment, the emergency equipment, the posted procedures for how to use everything because NASA assumed they had to Astronaut Proof the world, and the nooks and corners jammed with everything that didn't fit somewhere else.</p><p>"We use the PMM as storage, mostly," Bill said, gesturing to a hatch with a curtain pinned over it, "but if anyone's shy, they can shower down here. That's why the curtain. Babe and I mostly just been using Node 3 cause it's warmer up there."</p><p>"Going to a convent school doesn't make me a nun," Renée said with a shrug, and they moved on.</p><p>When they were done, Guarnere showed John where they were on the day's schedule and how to look it up on any of the numerous laptops velcroed to the walls.</p><p>"Your job for the first few days is to not break anything," he said, and John nodded. The motto for starting a new mission like this was to aim to be a neutral factor, rather than trying to help everyone and end up getting in the way. "You wanna give him a hand, Babe? Great. Renée, we're gonna call up Houston and learn how to fix the CO2 scrubbers. Again."</p><p>"Yeah, sure," Babe said, but Bill was already gone. "Alone at last," he said, grinning at John. "Come on, let's get you set up in the lab."</p><p>Most of John's learning got to be filmed by NASA for science, or for the amusement of past and future astronauts, John wasn't sure. He spent what felt like the whole afternoon doing fine motor skill tests, mental acuity tests, and whatever else NASA's doctors decided they needed to measure.</p><p>It left him in the position of spending hours three feet away from Babe, not able to say a thing that he didn't want transmitted back to Earth for analysis. He kept glancing over at Babe, like he couldn't believe they were both really up there, and finding that Babe was smiling back. He supposed that they were about to get sound scientific proof to the hypothesis that being around Babe made him stupid.</p><p>Certainly, his hands felt like they were all thumbs and he kept trying to put things down only for them to float off towards the air filters. Babe was doing a pretty good job of catching and fetching before they lost anything for good. Someday, when the Space Station finally outlived its use, it was going to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere and all the lost pens that'd gotten wedged in corners or behind panels would be gone for good.</p><p>Finally the schedule said they had a half hour break before dinner, and Babe drifted over to deactivate the video feed. "They made me do all that shit, too, you know," he said.</p><p>"Yeah, I know," John said. He'd been doing the kind of acuity tests designed to detect dementia, among other things, and still felt like his brain'd been stretched like chewing gum.</p><p>Babe pinched the bridge of his nose and checked a panel. "Guess Bill and Renée haven't got that CO2 scrubber working yet. Gives you a headache when it's down."</p><p>"Oh," John had heard about that, but the sensation had crept up on him so slowly that he'd just assumed it was something wrong with him. "I think space is making me stupid," he grumbled.</p><p>"'Making you?'" Babe asked. He pushed off and drifted over to John, who was holding himself in place with foot through one of the handholds. He bumped gently against John and steadied himself with a hand on John's elbow. He looked like he wanted to kiss John, so John shook his head, though he didn't push away, either.</p><p>"Babe," he said, then got stuck on what to say next.</p><p>"I know, I know," Babe muttered, "we gotta be careful."</p><p>"How'd we get into this mess?" Looking at Babe's dark eyes just a few inches away, John had a pretty clear memory of the answer to that one. They'd been training together then, too, on some stupid wildness survival exercise that made them both punchy from exhaustion and unable to resist whatever had been building between them for the last year and a half. John hadn't known that Babe was into guys, so it had been almost like a happy hallucination when Babe had up and kissed them.</p><p>"Hey, <em>you</em> wanted to keep it under our hats," Babe said, like he wasn't the one in the closet in the first place. Goddamn fighter jocks. "Not like I didn't agree with you, just it was your idea."</p><p>John nodded. A married couple had flown on the Shuttle, which was too packed to get up to much anyway, but mostly NASA made it pretty clear they didn't want hanky panky in space, gay or otherwise. "What if we'd told them, and they'd changed our crew assignments?" John asked, for the hundredth time.</p><p>"Not worth the risk," Babe agreed, yet again. "We'll tell them when you get back."</p><p>"Yeah," John said, as much a breath as a word. "Yeah, it's just hard."</p><p>Babe waggled his eyebrows. "Hard is it? Want me to do something about that?"</p><p>"Lord, you're a pain." John shoved lightly at Babe's chest, and the momentum rocked him back and sent Babe flying across the lab. He pinwheeled frantically, arms and legs going like a cartoon character who'd run off a cliff. He managed to catch a handhold the second before he crashed into the racks of experiments lining the hull. John clapped his hands over his mouth in horror, then started to giggle.</p><p>"Aw, goddammit, John," Babe muttered, but he was laughing too. "You're such an ass."</p><p>"I'm an ass?" John demanded.</p><p>Whatever Babe was going to say in reply was cut off by Guarnere poking his head in, sideways to their orientation, and saying, "You two knuckleheads'll be happy to know the air's working again. Sounds like you need a little oxygen in your brains."</p><p>"Yes, sir," John said, and Babe flipped Guarnere the bird.</p><p>"Jesus Christ," Guarnere muttered and vanished back into the corridor. "Dinner's in ten," he yelled back. "The Russians are coming so youse better behave."</p><p>"That the way astronauts talk?" John asked, still laughing. "Gotta learn me that sometime."</p><p>"Goddamn Army bastard," Babe muttered. "No one told him you were supposed to fly planes to get this gig, not jump out of them."</p><p>"Didn't the Air Force used to be part of the Army?" John asked, and Babe flipped him off too. "Hey, I'm Switzerland here," John said, "I got into NASA the hard way."</p><p>"Like I said, space ain't what made you stupid." Babe pushed off to drift closer, but stopped himself before he got into John's space this time. "Why get a doctorate in microbiology when you can just fly planes real fast?"</p><p>John shook his head. "I don't rightly know what I was thinking on that one either, Babe."</p><p>Babe smiled and rubbed his hand over his jaw like he was checking if he needed a shave. "I like how you say my name, like you're calling me baby," he said. "I've missed that."</p><p>"I've missed you," John told him again, and they smiled at each other for a moment before John remembered what he'd been meaning to say that he couldn't send over NASA-monitored e-mail. "Listen, I've been meaning to tell you something. No don't look at me like that, it ain't nothing bad. I hope. It's just I know we were saying we'd move in together once I get down, so, I, uh, I went ahead and got a cat. Well. It's a kitten. And it ain't born yet, but once you're back in Houston, you can get it."</p><p>Babe was still staring at him gape-mouthed and stunned, and John started running over all the ways that what he'd said was probably not a good idea, and that saying they might move in together after the mission wasn't the same as co-owning a pet, and really, the whole thing was a bad idea start to finish.</p><p>"Doctor Umezawa's cat's pregnant," he added, deciding that the best plan was to keep throwing good words after bad until Babe said something. "So Captain Nixon was asking around to see if anyone wanted the kittens, and I said I'd take one, since they'd be big enough by the time you get back, you could look after it for a bit, then Captain Nixon laughed at me, but said that'd be okay. I hope it <em>is</em> okay. Look, I'm sorry, Babe."</p><p>"No, uh," Babe waved and somehow that set him on a slow spin, until he was drifting sideways to John's perspective. "No, it's... it's good, Johnny. I like cats. I just wasn't expecting, well, a cat."</p><p>"Shit," John muttered, but Babe told him it was all good again, and John knew he'd get pissy if John asked how he felt one more time, so gave it up and went for dinner.</p><p>He met Rudolf and Evgeni flying the other way, and realized he'd gotten turned around and was heading towards the Russian segment, not Node 1. John added getting lost on a hundred-meter space station to his list of talents.</p><p>"Hey, you'll get used to it," Rudolf said, clapping John on the shoulder as they got turned around. "Last time I was up here, they were still building all this."</p><p>"Sure," John muttered, but let himself be towed along again.</p><p>"Hey, you found him!" Guarnere said when they made it into the crew area. "Was about to send out the dogs. Anyway, pull up a handhold, I been slaving over this hot water dispenser for a good five minutes, and I can tell this is gonna be a meal to remember."</p><p>John shook his head, but found a loop to catch his foot through, and when Guarnere tossed a packet of rehydrated food at him, managed to catch it instead of sending it spinning all over the room like he had at breakfast. Renée smiled at him like she was his ma and he'd just won a ribbon. John decided he'd take what he could get at this point.</p>
<hr/><p>John couldn't tell if Babe spent the next day avoiding him, or if NASA was just keeping everyone so busy that there wasn't much chance to catch moments together. For his part, John decided that after the cat fiasco, he was going to wait for Babe to come to him. Besides which, he wasn't short of things to do up here, even while he was still on light duties. Just looking out the window seemed to take up far more of his time than it should. John thought if the schedule would let him, he could just drift in the Cupola and watch the Earth fall by for every one of those nineteen sunrises.</p><p>He was just finishing up his mandatory hour on the treadmill on his second full day on orbit when Babe came to find him.</p><p>"Hey," John said. Without gravity, sweat didn't run down your body so much as form little undulating sheets on your skin, held on by surface tension unless you moved too fast and sent it spinning off into the air. John had to keep mopping his face so his perspiration wouldn't end up in the air filters. Last time, he'd forgotten that he couldn't just put down his towel, and it'd drifted out of reach, so now he ended up pulling up his t-shirt to wipe his face, exposing his stomach until he got it pushed back down.</p><p>Babe took a moment to leer. "Hey, back. You planning on catching a shower in the PMM?"</p><p>John shrugged and unclipped himself from the harness holding him onto the treadmill. "If Renée don't care, I was just gonna use Node 3 like you fellows've been doing."</p><p>"Right, right," Babe muttered, he tucked his hands in his armpits, which looked even sillier with his legs curling up behind him like an angry comma. "Well, if you shower in the PMM, I'll help you. Got a couple schedule blocks clear."</p><p>"How many blocks?" John asked despite his better sense.</p><p>"Um, four, I guess, plus the end of this one." Babe tipped his head to give what would have been a doe-eyed look through his bangs, if he still had bangs after Rudolf's clippers had gotten to his hair. "Come on."</p><p>John had lived on the narrow path before Babe, if not always the straight one, but something about this kid just set off his every instinct for bad choices. "Alright," he said.</p><p>"Great! I already got the towels," Babe said, collecting them from where they floated by the door.</p><p>"Cocky so and so," John muttered but grabbed his change of clothes from where he'd velcroed it to the wall, and drifted after Babe.</p><p>The PMM didn't have a hell of a lot of room in it after six month's worth of supplies and two medium-sized astronauts were jammed into it.</p><p>"Can't believe you got me back into the closet," John muttered, looping his feet in to hold steady. He wanted to ask if Babe had thought more about the kitten, but it didn't seem like what this was going to be about, and John could hardly object to that, either, not when it'd been so long.</p><p>"Your idea," Babe reminded him, already stripping John out of his sweaty exercise shirt. He broke out a towel that he'd soaked through from the hot water dispenser, and started to give John a speedy and oddly professional sponge bath, as close as anyone got to a shower in microgravity.</p><p>"What, really?" John asked. He'd expected "help you shower" to involve a lot less actual washing, though he couldn't say having Babe's hands all over him was exactly a turn off, either.</p><p>"Hush." Babe held a finger to his lips. He rotated a hundred and eighty degrees and worked his way up John's legs. The cloth picked up the sweat and any grime that might have gotten through the air filters, but was a far cry from the long hot showers they'd used to share on weekends. When he got up to John's thighs, Babe undid the drawstring of his shorts and started to push them down.</p><p>"Whoa, flyboy," John whispered. He kicked loose and used Babe's body as a handheld until they were face to face. "Don't know if you've forgotten, but I ain't that easy."</p><p>"No?" Babe asked, raised eyebrows summoning up memories of every time John had been exactly that easy.</p><p>"For Pete's sake," John muttered, and pulled their bodies together and kissed Babe. Babe flailed with one arm until he managed to get the towels in one of the mesh bags hanging from the wall (or possibly floor, John had lost track), and then took John's face in his hands and started to kiss him properly.</p><p>Babe had always been a voracious kisser, his hold on John firm and his lips demanding. He swept his tongue into John's mouth with what felt like enough force to spin them back into a rack of food packages, and John had a moment to think that he missed gravity if only for the way that Babe used to pin him against a wall at times like this. They bounced and drifted towards the curtain pinned across the hatch, but Babe snagged one of the racks before they could get very far. The momentum spun their bodies again, but Babe seemed oblivious, every ounce of his attention on kissing John.</p><p>At least this wasn't one of the days they had to wear heart monitors, because John was pretty sure he'd have the doctors in Houston calling to find out what the medical emergency was. The background whir and hum of the Space Station's systems buried the little moans Babe was making as he swept his tongue over John's teeth. John was wearing only his exercise shorts, but felt like he could heat the whole place. His cock pressed out against his shorts, and he tried to get the leverage he needed to rub off against Babe's hip. John looped his calf around Babe's thigh, which sort of worked, but the angle was all wrong. Babe's own cock pressed into John's stomach, and John reached down to get his hand into Babe's sweatpants.</p><p>"Stop, stop, stop," Babe hissed. He grabbed at John's hand, which just sent them spinning again. "You got any idea how hard it is to get semen out of air filters?"</p><p>"Uh..." John tried to picture that, and decided he didn't want to.</p><p>"I don't either, and I don't wanna find out. Let's do this smart. Here." Babe turned using John's body, until they were opposite each other again. "Hook in, we can do it like this."</p><p>John had to back up to the side of the compartment using Babe's body, then grope around until he got one of his feet through a handhold, by then, they'd both backed up until they were mutually face to dick. John snorted. It was crudely direct, but workable. He shivered as Babe finally managed to pull his shorts down, immediately taking John's cock in his mouth, grabbing his hips to hold their bodies locked in position. John jerked forward, trying to thrust into Babe's mouth, but they just swayed together.</p><p>Babe said something indistinguishable around John's dick, which John took to be a request for reciprocation. He slid Babe's pants down to his thighs and took his cock out through his shorts, but it was difficult to focus on taking it slow or teasing Babe along when Babe was swallowing his whole dick down, and moaning like it was double chocolate ice cream. It'd been months since he'd had Babe's mouth on him, and the desperation now seemed to wipe every single thought clean out of John's mind.</p><p>John licked across the tip of Babe's cock, tasting the antiseptic soap they used for everything up here, and smiled as Babe gasped and sucked him down further. It felt familiar and strange at the same time to lick Babe's from tip to root and back up again. In the months they'd been together, they'd pretty well learned each other's bodies, but being on orbit made everything so new. At least the microgravity eased the awkward positioning issues that came with six-nining. Now they were free to explore each other's bodies, with no one lying on someone's arm or bracing awkwardly.</p><p>Their feet kept them anchored in place as their bodies undulated with each twitch and thrust of hips. John squeezed Babe's ass, pulling them together so he could nose through his shorts to his balls, and Babe hummed in pleasure around John's dick. Each movement fed back into the other's body, mirroring and enhancing everything John did. Even with a dick in his mouth, Babe was trying to beg John for more, so John finally wrapped his lips around Babe's cock, and started to run his tongue around the head.</p><p>Months ago, Babe had awkwardly tried to talk John through what he liked, until John had had to resort to online tutorials and listening to Babe's broken "oh, yeah, please, John," to work out that it drove Babe crazy when John pushed the tip of his tongue under his foreskin, and that he didn't mind that John couldn't take a lot of his cock so long as John fingered his ass at the same time.</p><p>John reached behind Babe to trace the rim of his hole with one finger, wishing that there was some way to let Babe screw him that wasn't going to be impossibly messy. John had an image of himself strapped to the first aid bench while Babe thrust into him, but even Guarnere would probably think that was a bit much for a public area. At least he had this, swaying back and forth to the roll of Babe's hips, his mouth making Babe moan and beg around his cock. Babe's hands were wandering up and down John's back, tracing pink lines on his pale skin with his nails, each one feeling electric with desire.</p><p>Babe had worked John's cock down into his throat, and when he groaned in response to John's fingers pushing shallowly into his ass, the vibration sent a shock through John's muscles. John had to force himself to keep from biting down as his body wound itself tight, focusing down to the slide of Babe's lips on his shaft, and the pulse of Babe's throat. John jerked forward, but Babe just moved with him, and he hovered just at the edge of release. Babe's body was trembling the same as his was, both so close. John could taste come already, and feel Babe's muscles shaking. They'd both curled their free leg behind them, unconsciously searching for leverage that wasn't there.</p><p>The dig of Babe's fingers into John's hips as he sought more control was what finally tipped John over. He missed the way he could let himself beg and praise Babe in these moments, but did his best to hold on and ride through the pleasure without either screaming or letting Babe's dick slide out of his mouth. Babe stroked up and down John's hips and back. His hands were softer up here than they'd been on Earth, smoothed by lack of heavy work. Funny thing to notice while pumping into Babe's throat, one more thing that being up here changed. Finally, Babe let John's dick slide out of his mouth, and muffled his face against the crease of John's thighs.</p><p>Babe hadn't come when John did, despite his moaning, so John cupped Babe's balls in his palm. They, too, were drifting he noted absently—the small part of his brain still running apparently bent on noticing irrelevant details. John palmed Babe's balls, and sucked, and somehow that was enough. John was focusing so hard on swallowing everything as Babe came that he almost lost himself. His eyes watered from lack of breath, and he clutched Babe's hips to try to keep him steady as John kept sucking him and Babe shook and jerked his hips towards John's face. A drop of come escaped the corner of John's mouth, a floating glistening ball, and John grabbed it and stuck it to the bare skin of Babe's hip.</p><p>"Shoulda kept the towels out," Babe muttered, reaching for them now.</p><p>John finished swallowing and made sure he had Babe's attention before he licked the last floating drop of come off the end of his dick before it could drift free. "Missed you," he said again, and Babe made an inarticulate grunt.</p><p>They already had the towels, so clean up was pretty fast after that. John changed into his regular crew clothes, did a quick check of the compartment for lost items, and followed Babe back up towards the labs. They even had a few minutes to spare on the last of Babe's free blocks.</p><p>It wasn't that different from the quickies they'd snatched when long days of joint expedition training had wrapped up: vanishing for thirty minutes before showing up at the bar with everyone else. John had thought it looked suspicious, but Babe'd said he'd learned a thing or two when he'd been a fighter jock, and it'd be fine. The biggest challenge then as now was not grinning like an idiot or randomly bursting into song.</p><p>It didn't seem to be any more suspicious now. Renée wanted even more blood samples and to scan John's eyeballs, and Guarnere told Babe he needed a hand with the water recycling, cheerfully reminding everyone that today's coffee was also tomorrow's coffee. No one asked where they'd been or made the kind of crack John would expect if they had the least idea something was up.</p><p>John let himself relax.</p><p>It turned out to be too soon.</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning, after John had survived his latest round of acuity tests, Guarnere tapped John on the shoulder and said he needed a minute of his time. Babe and Renée were moving recycling canisters up from the Russian segment so they could be plugged into the station's main systems. John was supposed to be checking his fruit fly experiments next, but supposed that Guarnere had commander's prerogative, and followed him up into the Japanese labs.</p><p>Guarnere had just gotten off the treadmill, and was still wearing his artificial leg, which he looped into a strap near the porthole so they could watch the Earth fall by as they talked. John followed suit, waiting for Guarnere to take the lead. At least four days in microgravity had led to him not bashing and crashing about quite so much any more, so he didn't look like an idiot every time he moved.</p><p>"So," Guarnere said, looking John up and down critically. "It's part of my duties as commander to keep tabs on crew morale, and dispense some of that hard-earned astronaut wisdom as the situation requires."</p><p>"Okay?" John said tentatively. "I'm sure I can use all the help I can get."</p><p>Guarnere grinned and reached out to pat John on the cheek, which nearly sent him spinning. "You know, I like you, kid. You've got the right attitude. So, piece of hard earned wisdom number one, and it comes with a free parable, because you new boots learn better when there's story time: You ever hear how I decided to join NASA?"</p><p>"Uh." John had been trying to work out where this conversation was going, but hadn't managed to put the pieces together yet. He had, in fact, heard a lot of stories about how Wild Bill Guarnere had decided to join NASA. He picked the least offensive. "Rumor going around the AsCans is that you got high and did it on a bet."</p><p>"True!" Guarnere admitted, but then his expression turned pensive and he looked out the window at the Earth below. Unlike the Cupola, there wasn't a screen to tell them what part of the Earth they were over. It was somewhere in the Pacific, John thought: lots of water and little blue-green islands. Guarnere watched until they came to the night side before saying, "Truth is there was a little more to it than that."</p><p>"I was kind of hoping there was, sir," John said sincerely.</p><p>"Wiseass," Guarnere muttered, but his eyes were fixed on the darkness below them. "I used to be a paratrooper, 101st Airborne, Babe probably told you all that. That's where I picked this up"—he tapped his artificial foot against the wall as punctuation—"me and my buddy Joe Toye, we was deployed in the 'Stan. One night, we both got hit, RPGs, both lost the same leg, fucking nuts."</p><p>John opened his mouth to say he was sorry, but Guarnere waved him off.</p><p>"Anyway, me and Joe are lying there side by side, medics packaged us up, and we're waiting on the Parajumpers for an extraction. We're both high as godamn kites on morphine, looking up at the sky. I ain't never seen stars like I seen there, not 'til I got up here, anyway. Now Joe, I can tell he's only just holding on. He's thinking about all the things he ain't gonna be able to do with just the one leg, and he's a moody son of a bitch on a good day, so I start to thinking of something to cheer him up, like. I been trying to tell him 'bout my girl, how I'm gonna stop putting it off and marry her so as she can help me crutch around, but that ain't doing the trick. Joe says he don't want to hear about my girl. Just then, I look up, and boom! There's the I.S.S.. She's sailing right over us, brightest goddamn star in the sky. So I says to Joe, 'I bet you a brand new Ben Franklin I can get up there before you do.'"</p><p>"Did he take the bet?" John asked. Below them, John picked out the lights of San Francisco, suburbs spreading out until they faded into the darkness of the Cascades.</p><p>Guarnere laughed, but it wasn't his usual machine gun chuckle, but a softer sound. "You kidding? Never known Joe to turn down a bet. I won, too, but only 'cause he got MDed on account of his heart. He designs those sims, the ones that shave a year of your life every time you take 'em. Sadistic son of a bitch."</p><p>"Oh, well, that's good," John said. He wasn't completely sure what the point of this story was. Maybe it was just Guarnere getting to know him, though he had said at the outset that it was a parable.</p><p>Then Guarnere turned on John with a shrewd look that seemed to cut right through to his soul. "What I'm saying is I know what it's like to be the first. You think I didn't have to fight three times as hard to get here, that I didn't know that if I fuck this up, they're going to let someone else with one of these up here? Ever."</p><p>"No, sir," John said, automatically. He did know. The same went for Renée, the first woman from her country to actually fly. "But I'm, I'm not the first. I mean, there was Sally Ride...."</p><p>Guarnere shook his head, "Not nobody knew Sally Ride batted for both teams 'til the day she passed. If NASA'd known back then, they wouldn't've let her fly, would they? You're the first one that's out, proud and on orbit."</p><p>John swallowed. He tried not to think about that unless he had to, or the pressure of it all got too much for him. Conversations like this made him understand why Babe stayed in the closet.</p><p>"There's a whole lotta people down there got their eyes on this little tin can," Guarnere continued, "and a whole lotta those people're looking up right now, right this minute, and for some of them, you're that shining star." He poked John in the center of his chest for emphasis. "You're that one thing that'll keep 'em going. It's a hell of a thing to put on one set of shoulders, believe me, I know, I'd rather just be another jack working Shuttle runs, but that's how it's sliced. You understand?"</p><p>The sensation of blood rushing out of one's head was caused by the body's core going into fight or flight mode, and it turned out to still be possible in microgravity. "You have this conversation with Babe, too?" John asked.</p><p>"You bet your ass I did," Guarnere said, and from his tone, John guessed Babe hadn't gotten the friendly version. "Look, you're a good kid, and and they don't let you up here if you're stupid, but you can still step on your dick, even if there ain't no gravity. Use that head of yours. Be more careful."</p><p>"Yes, sir," John said. He looked back at the Earth, but they were over some part of middle America that he couldn't tell just by the patterns of roads. Maybe they were even over Alabama now, the distance making John's home state unrecognizable. "I do understand."</p><p>Guarnere studied him for a moment more before nodding. In the corridor beyond the module, John heard a distant call of, "Ride 'em, cowboy!" in Renée's precise Franco-Belgian accent. Guarnere sighed, and started to push off towards the hatch.</p><p>"Sounds like they've just about worked out a few laws of momentum," Guarnere grumbled. "Better go make sure they know that something with that much mass is as hard to stop as it is to get going."</p><p>"Right," John said, he had to admit that he was curious what the hell was going on out there. "Oh, hey, sir," he said, catching Guarnere's wrist. "You said there were two things. What was the second one?"</p><p>"Oh, right." Funny how John already knew which shade of Guarnere's smiles to dread. "Evgeni Eduardovich said to remind you that the way the air currents are up here, everything drifts down to the Russian Service Module eventually. Fluids, too."</p><p>"Oh, God," John muttered. It seemed like they hadn't done as comprehensive a job cleaning up as they'd thought.</p><p>Guarnere clapped him on the shoulder, then grabbed the back of his neck and shook him lightly. "You're gonna be okay, kid," he said. Outside the hatch, a water canister sailed past, pulling Babe in it's wake. "Them two, on the other hand," Bill grumbled. "Jesus Christ!"</p><p>He shoved off, leaving John to stare down at the trailing lights of the Florida Keys. The commander was right: John needed to get his head on straight and focus on what mattered. Trouble was, it was hard to think anything mattered when he was in the same room as Babe.</p><p>He just wished he knew for sure that Babe felt the same way.</p>
<hr/><p>"I don't think I'm ever going to be able to look Rodin or Spanov in the eye again," Babe grumbled after dinner. He'd gone up to the Cupola to close the shutters for the night, and John had drifted after him, even though they were both scheduled for a sleep period.</p><p>"What about Guarnere?" John asked, still smarting from the dressing down.</p><p>Babe, however, shrugged and waved it off. "Bill's Bill. He's alright."</p><p>"Yeah, I guess he is." John was never sure how military types like that would react, but the worst he'd run into at NASA was a few off color jokes. Even Roscosmos had been surprisingly non-awful, though he did get the impression that the Russians were officially pretending being gay wasn't a thing. It worked as long as John didn't make it a thing. "He might've had a point, too," John added. "That wasn't the smartest thing we've ever done."</p><p>"It weren't the stupidest," Babe protested, which was fair enough. Then he lifted his hands to heaven, or in this case Earth, and admitted, "Yeah, Bill's got a point. Thought I'd be better at being able to keep my damn hands off you, but Jesus Christ, I missed you, you know?"</p><p>He'd said it before, but John hadn't been entirely sure he'd believed it. "Yeah, I know," John said anyway. He glanced at Babe who was studying the Sahara like he'd never seen sand before. "Look," John bit the inside of his cheek. It was still difficult to think with Babe this close to him, but they really had to make a go of actually talking sooner or later. "How 'bout we call that getting it out of our system, huh? After this: just business."</p><p>"Fine, fine," Babe agreed, though he didn't look like he liked it any more than John did. "I'll be the picture of fucking professionalism. Oh, reminds me: you should always make sure you don't have a hot mic to Houston before you say fucking anything. I have learned."</p><p>"See, that's why I don't profane the name of the Lord," John told him primly, and Babe batted the back of his head. They smiled at each other, and John felt his chest warm at how goofy Babe looked with that grin and that stupid buzz cut. Still, the uncertainty tugged at his mind. "Babe, it's just until we get back home, right?"</p><p>"What is?" Babe asked.</p><p>John knew he sounded like a child for asking, but he couldn't keep going on feeling this uncertain, especially not when he was going to have to go without the reassurance of Babe's touch until they both had their feet back on the ground. "This, this whole professionalism thing, it's just while we're up here, right?"</p><p>"Course it is," Babe said, then when John couldn't think of anything to say, twisted so that they were face to face, touching John's cheek with his knuckles. "Johnny, of course it is. I promise you, the second we're both back, I'm going to do something <em>extremely</em> fucking unprofessional to you. Okay?"</p><p>"Okay," John said. He knew that Babe had to be able to see how relieved he was; his face was an open book, one of the reasons he'd never been able to stay in the closet, even in Sipsey, Alabama, where a little more discretion would have done him a world of good. "Sorry, Babe, I just, well, sometimes I worry, is all."</p><p>"Hey, being an astronaut is all about sweating the small stuff, ain't it?" Babe said.</p><p>"Sure is," John agreed. He let his head tip forward until their foreheads brushed, the familiar motion feeling too casual without proper gravity behind it. "Maybe that's it. We've spent the last few years planning every darn detail of our lives, down to how many pairs of underwear a man goes through in five months on orbit, and then this whole thing with you is just... well I guess I don't rightly know what it is, 'cept that I like it."</p><p>"That why you got me a cat?" Babe asked, soft and understanding.</p><p>"Us," John corrected. "I got us a cat, and, yeah, I guess it is, ain't it? Just wanted to have a plan in place."</p><p>Babe sighed, and looked heavenward towards the Earth. "Well, you're the microbiologist, maybe you'll keep the damn thing alive," Babe said. "I've killed every goldfish I've ever owned in a week flat."</p><p>"Land's sake, you're a disaster, ain't you?" John asked.</p><p>"NASA let me up here, I can't be that bad," Babe protested, then pretended to think about it and added, "But I'm just a shithead from South Philly. You're the gay revolution hero or what the fuck ever."</p><p>"A shining star," John agreed, thinking how Guarnere's little speeches could lift a soul up at that same time as it put a man down.</p><p>"Ugh, you're going to wear that one like a medal, ain't you?" Babe demanded.</p><p>"Was thinking I might," John agreed.</p><p>Instead of coming up with a retort or put down, Babe reached up and traced his knuckles along John's cheekbone and smiled at him. Above, or below, or beside them the Space Station raced ahead, falling just a little too fast to ever hit the Earth.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Kudos totally make my day, and I very much appreciate comments of every length, percentage of emoji, and level of coherency.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>